Anjelica Huston - part two

She was born during The African Queen, met Captain Ahab on the set of Moby Dick and nearly 'out-Irished the Irish' while starring in The Dead. Anjelica Huston looks back on a life in movies and her relationship with her father, John.

Adrian Wootton: The question I want to ask you before opening it out to the audience is about your becoming a film director: do you think there were things you gained or learned from your father, or was there nothing that he taught you that you used later as a director?

Anjelica Huston: I think he probably taught me most of the things that I know, in terms of how movies work and how sets work. He always cast well, it was his theory that if you cast well, the job was mostly done. He had a key phrase: "Shoot the action", which sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't. And I think I sort of try to apply his essence, or things that I remember like that. There was a moment when I was going to North Carolina to shoot Bastard Out of Carolina. And I was reading up on direction and stuff when I remembered a very good chapter in my father's autobiography, Open Book, about film-making. It talks about where the camera should be and kind of obvious but important things. And I'd read the chapter, and the book has a very nice cover photograph by Eve Arnold, who was a dear friend of his. And so it came time for me to leave to go make the movie and you know, you're packing to go on location and everything weighs a tonne and you have to change planes and everything else. And I was like, "Am I going to bring this book?" So I brought the book with me.

I had this rented house in North Carolina, which was one of those empty, soulless houses, a summer vacation home. And I walked upstairs - and usually when I'm on location, I hole up in my bedroom and that's it. I have my television, my books and that becomes my little world. And I walked into the room and there was a bookstand, so I knew why I'd brought the book. And he sort of counselled me throughout - we'd have a sort of conversation at night. Later it came out in the Star - Anjelica talks to the dead. I'm sure that happens to anyone who's... and I don't want to sound religious here necessarily, but anyone who knows the power of prayer knows that prayers are answered. And he does answer me, especially if I ask the right question.

AW: In Agnes Browne, you did two things - you returned to Ireland, your childhood and spiritual home, and you also directed yourself, which I understand you found very difficult.

AH: I didn't mean for it to happen that way. I had Rosie O'Donnell all lined up for this part, and she begged off at the last moment, and we had about three weeks to go before we started this movie, so we were in a bit of a crisis. And it would have fallen apart if I hadn't done it, so that's why I decided to do it. The reason it's difficult is because you can't be everywhere at once. If you're the actress, you're late for the director; if you're the director, you can't set up the shot. The actress has to be in hair and makeup in the morning while the director has to be setting up. There's always this process of catching up with yourself, and not having enough time to either plan or recover. Most of the time, we'd set up a tent in the middle of the street in Ringsend [Dublin suburb] and it's not that great a thing, dressing and undressing in the Irish weather; albeit summer, it's cold. And every morning they wet down the street because they know it is going to rain. I'm glad I did it, it was a good experience, but it was hard. And especially if someone has a problem, and you're in that position and you're dealing with a lot of problems anyway, one or two problems will start to make you feel like the camel's back is breaking. And you don't want to lose your temper or disappoint the bondsman, so you try to keep an even keel, but sometimes I felt a little like I was slightly out of my depth.

AW: So you're not going to be casting yourself as poor white trash in Give Us a Kiss then?

AH: No.

AW: Okay, we're going to open it out to the audience at this point.

Q1: A lot of actors now do voices for animated features. Is that something that you have any interest in yourself?

AH: Yeah, I do quite a lot of animated voices. I'm currently Queen Clarion and the horrible Vesuvia in the latest Tinkerbell for Disney. And they're also quite lucrative and you don't have to put on a lot of makeup. I very much like doing voiceovers, and I also like doing readings. I do books on tape and stuff. I have fun with it.

AW: On Woody Allen, you made two films with him. Actors are desperate to work with him, but they all describe it as a rather mysterious process. How did you find working with him, on Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery?

AH: Well, Crimes and Misdemeanors was the first movie that I did with Woody. I'd heard about him that he didn't like a lot of commentary from actors about how they like their costumes or anything like that. He'd had a bit of trouble with an actress who didn't like her jacket. So I was determined that I was going to like my wardrobe. So when I was presented with pink argyle sweaters and one of those hairdos with an explosion at the front, I just loved it. I'd been making a movie in Canada, and I was going via New York and I knew I was going to be working with Woody in a few weeks, so I thought I'd call him up and maybe we could have a drink or coffee or something. So I took it upon myself to try to contact him. Of course that took a while. But finally he called back. So I suggested coffee, and he said, "That sounds great, but I'm sick. But maybe I'll be better on Thursday." And I said, "Well, great, so maybe we can have coffee on Thursday." But he said, "But what if I'm sick on Thursday?" So, we didn't meet - I went through all my costume fittings with his designer Jeffrey Kurland and horrible clothes.

So on the first day, I show up on set, and there's Sven Nykvist and Woody dressed exactly alike in woollen sailors' hats and big duffel coats. They're not very similar, but they were somehow symbiotic. And I walked on to the set, which was an apartment house on Lexington Avenue or something, and Woody goes, "OK, you start out in the kitchen, you take pills, you scream, you walk off, you leave the room, you come back"... a hundred and twenty-five directions, and all around popping pills and screaming at Martin Landau and I thought, "I'm never going to be able to do this." But I did it, and that was a stroke of good luck that we moved on because I don't know if I'd have been able to do too many shots of that scene. It was such a trial by fire, as I'd never met him before and I was really, really nervous. But he was very good to me, and he's got a good sense of humour, and he's always trying to get you out early.

Q3: Have you done much stage work? And would you ever consider coming to Britain to do a play?

AH: Yeah, I'd love to come to Britain to do a play. I haven't done a lot of stage work, and I have a bit of stage fright. I did a thing called Tamara about Tamara Lempicka many years ago in Los Angeles. It was kind of an arabesque. We did it at the American Legion on Highland Avenue and the audience followed the actors from one room to the next; I had a great time doing it. The reason really that I haven't done it is partly because I haven't found the part that I'm truly passionate about to leave my home and my family and my paycheque for months on end to come and work here. I'd love to do it but it would it have to be really, really worth my time.

Q4: What drew you to work with Wes Anderson?

AH: He wanted to meet me, and I looked at Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. I think he's very talented. He wanted to talk to me about The Royal Tenenbaums. We met in New York, and I immediately fell for him. He's really smart and has a very peculiar, interesting sensibility. I really liked the script a lot, but I didn't feel the character was all that developed and he was very open to changes and to discussion. I think so much of it has to do with being attracted to somebody or someone's personality, and I immediately liked Wes.

AW: After the success of Royal Tenenbaums, he actually wrote the part in The Life Aquatic for you, didn't he?

AH: Yeah. I'm going to work with him again in February. I'm going out to India. He's got a movie called The Darjeeling Limited about three brothers on a train in search of spiritual enlightenment. I come on at the end of the movie. He tells me I'm the Captain Kurtz of the movie. He's sending me small bronze casts of nuns like Mother Teresa, so I'm a little worried, but we'll see.

Q5: I was always puzzled why your father never directed any of the Hemingway short stories. He seemed the obvious director to do Fifty Grand or My Old Man. Was he never tempted or was it just copyright?

AH: I'm not sure. I know that he preferred, and I think The Dead would belie that, but I think he mostly liked doing stories that weren't all that brilliantly successful. I don't know, I'm probably talking nonsense but I think I heard him say that he preferred to take a story that wasn't necessarily all that well-written, that often less well-written stories make the best movies. I think in a way he's right. Certainly, if you look at F Scott Fitzgerald, he never really translates. I don't know, writing doesn't get much better than James Joyce, does it?

Q6: You mentioned William Wyler and I just wanted to ask a question about your grandfather, Walter Huston. Dodsworth is a film that's not shown very often on television or whatever. What did you think of Dodsworth, particularly your grandfather's performance in it, because he's amazing with Mary Astor. Nice DNA, by the way, to inherit.

AH: My grandfather Walter died two years before I was born, so I never knew him. And growing up in Ireland, we had the home projector and we watched Dad's movies. So I watched African Queen and Maltese Falcon and Treasure of Sierra Madre over and over again. Those were the movies I grew up with. And of course, Devil and Daniel Webster was part of that opus, and Treasure was my grandfather's seminal performance. I'd never seen Dodsworth, and I think it was when I first came to New York, when I was 21 or 22 years old. I was watching television one night and Dodsworth came on. I didn't know anything about it really. And I realised this was my grandfather, and suddenly he wasn't this little old gold prospector, he was this tall, rather elegant banker who has this wonderful love affair with Mary Astor and is married to the mad Ruth Chatterton. And I think the young David Niven is also in it. It's a fantastic movie, for those of you who haven't seen it. And I realised what a fantastic actor he was. And also, I know him through his movies, otherwise I would have no idea who my grandfather was.

Q7: I really enjoyed your performance in the recent TV series Huff and I wondered what your experience of working on a TV show was like, and playing a psychiatrist?

AH: Thank you. Did it play here? I had a great time on it, I really liked that show and I was really disappointed when they cancelled it. I keep thinking it was a mistake. I liked it a lot. First of all, it's fast. You're on your feet. It was the first time I played stoned on film - that was a lot of fun. I got to smoke grass with Hank Azaria, not really but fake grass. I liked the character, I thought she was quite a departure. Thank you, I'm glad you liked it.

Q8: It's really interesting to hear you talk about your dad, and it sounds like you have a real respect and almost an awe for your dad because of what a great man he was. Was there another side of that - was he ever like a dad to you, would he take you walking in the park or push you on swings?

AH: No.

Q8: Can you give me a bit more than no?

AH: Yes. He was bigger than anyone else, except for Friedrich Ledebur who played Queequeg on Moby Dick, who was maybe the most magnificent man I'd ever seen. But my father was pretty magnificent. He was taller and somehow grander - not grander in terms of snobbery because he was anything but, he was very much a man of the people. I think he would have made a very good politician, more in the kind of Huey Long mould. He could be very tough, he could be very judgmental and critical, he could be incredibly loving. I think it was easier for him when I was little; when I was going through adolescence, we both kind of had a problem with that. There were moments when he would be incredibly gentle and sweet, but there were other moments when he was the fire horse. He was a Leo and he was born in the Chinese year of the fire horse and you don't mess with them. Their eyes turn red when they're angry.

He was a brilliant storyteller, fantastic raconteur, he had a wicked sense of humour, often slightly at other people's expense, particularly if they were stupid. He didn't like stupid people. And he didn't like bigots. I think if there's something that I appreciate that he gave to me, it's across-the-board no judgments on people. He could be perfectly happy around a campfire in the Belgian Congo as with grand people. He was fearless, he didn't like cowardice of any kind, and if you showed it, it was an immediate red light. He'd go, "Oh really, that scares you? Well, let's try that again." And I completely adored him.

AW: You get a special thanks on Million Dollar Baby, and I'd be interested to know why. And Clint Eastwood played your father in White Hunter, Black Heart. Did he ring you up and ask you about him?

AH: I found Million Dollar Baby - I'll be modest. I was looking through the Los Angeles Review of Books and saw a book by an author called FX Toole about boxing. I inherited a love of boxing from my father - another thing he turned me on to early. I like boxing. So I read these short stories. And Al[bert] Ruddy, who produced Million Dollar Baby, and I had been talking about doing something else together and that hadn't worked out and I felt like I owed him one. So I told him I had a great story for him and I sent him Million Dollar Baby. So that's why he thanked me. But when Clint went to make White Hunter, Black Heart... I knew Clint, I'd sat beside him at dinner a few times, and I don't know why necessarily he didn't seek out members of my family more, but he didn't. But I think it was a very good effort. There were things about the movie that didn't really correlate to my own experience, but everyone's experience is different. And I think it was a very daring thing to do, and a lot of the time it worked and some of the time it didn't. But I think it was a valiant effort and it came from a good place. It was worthy if not successful. The design of the movie was wrong though - my father would never have had those sculptures in his house. Little things like that I know but you don't necessarily know.

Q9: You've played quite a variety of different types of women in your career. Is there a particular type you'd like to play that you haven't already?

AH: Docile blonde; docile short blonde.

AW: You played blonde in The Grifters.

AH: Yeah, I loved being blonde. It's true, they have more fun, even when they're cannibalising their children. Actually, most of that was a wig and I was really ugly offstage when I did that because they had to bleach the front of my hair and back, because when you bend your head you can see dark underneath. And my eyebrows. So I was really pretty.

AW: I have to say, it's one of my personal favourites of your movies. It's a fantastic film, a great adaptation of a tough novel, but I also imagine it must have been one of your most challenging roles because she's such a complicated character.

AH: Yeah, it was a hard time for me because I'd been going out with Jack Nicholson for a long time and that was right when we broke up, so the analogies were... I was literally cutting off my arm there. I think it's one of the best three parts I've ever had. I loved Stephen Frears - I had a fantastic time with him, I loved John Cusack and I thought Annette [Bening] did an amazing job. It was like having the most delicious dirty little secret, that movie. We went to town on those lines. There's nothing like Jim Thompson, you know. "Get off the grift, Roy." Stuff that's fantastic to work on. Once in a while, all the elements come together, and it has nothing to do with money or comfort, but everything to do with a great piece of material and being with people who inspire you. That's what it's about. That's what it should be about. It rarely happens that way, but it's like kismet, all the forces come together.

AW: We are going to have to stop. I'd really like to thank Anjelica Huston for being our terrific guest of honour here this evening.